Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) is a unique phase of sleep distinguishable by rapid movement of the eyes, accompanied with low muscle tone throughout the body and the propensity of the sleeper to dream vividly. Due to the normal resemblance to waking states, I dive into this paradoxical and desynchronized sleep and for 90 minutes which lasts one sleep cycle between REM and non-REM sleep, my mind alternates between conscious and unconscious phases. Slipping through this time zone, the past is confused with the present, experience with longing, the real with the imaginary, future becomes present, emotions are deafening and desires or fears alternate with dizzying speed and become pictures.

In those continuous movements of the eyes, I see what I know I will never see again. The ones I lost or when I lost myself; places I will not go again; places that will not share the same sky. The color here is the way I want it. The smell, the heat, the air. A succession of images, ideas and sensations that occur involuntarily in my mind. A virtual extension of a time that has passed, that has been experienced. In this illusion, loss does not weigh down; pain does not hurt and memory manipulates my dreams in an anarchic way. Nothing is there and everything is.

Αnd while my brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake, my body abruptly loses muscle tone and goes into atonia. In this binary state, I fall into a deep sleep and when I wake up, some images are still there but others have instantly faded in, the same way that they have disappeared from my life.